An Olympian victory

Beijing has set the scene for next year’s games with monumental buildings and noone can compete with their audacity

Although Beijing is as big as you expect - a dauntingly gridlocked, teeming, dust-laden bigness - it is only the third-largest city in China, behind Guangzhou and Shanghai. Yet, as the capital most likely to take over from Washing-ton, DC, as the world's centre of supreme power, it has a hell of a swagger. When you see what Beijing is doing for the 2008 Olympics, you wonder why London is bothering.

Just as well we started Heathrow's Terminal Five in good time, because, when Richard Rogers's building opens next March, it will have taken nearly 20 years from initial concept to reality. In contrast, China decided it needed a vast new air terminal in 2003 and asked Norman Foster to design it. Then it brought in an army of 50,000 workers to build it, along with an extra runway. And it is finished, bar the final testing, which means it will open